Norman Rockwell is America's greatest visual storyteller. He may have been one of our most remarkable filmmakers, too.

We think of Rockwell's 1960 “Self-Portrait,” with a bespectacled, pipe-smoking Rockwell seated on a stool, peering around the edge of his canvas at a mirror, his right hand dutifully recording what he sees.

While it's an extraordinary work, actually a triple self-portrait, it doesn't reflect the complexity of Rockwell's artistic process, which is explored in “Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera.”

The exhibition, featuring Rockwell sketches and paintings — and the meticulously posed photographs from which they came — was organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., and runs through Sept. 1 at the McNay Art Museum.

“First and foremost,” said Rockwell Museum Director Laurie Norton Moffatt during a recent tour of the landmark show, “Norman Rockwell was a storyteller. In order to tell the story he had to be much like a film director.”

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Generations grew up on Rockwell's magazine illustrations. All those girls blowing bubbles, grandmas praying, boys playing baseball and men generally delivering the family from evil were costumed and painstakingly posed in the studio by the artist.

A professional photographer would then capture the scene or facial expression with a click, and Rockwell would add that to the composite of his original concept.

Take “The Runaway” from 1958. A buzz-headed boy sits at a soda fountain counter on a shiny silver stool, a stick and bindle at his feet, as the soda jerk and a cop lean in to hear his complaint.

The black-and-white photograph and resulting oil painting, included in “Rockwell,” have subtle differences (the soda jerk's hat, the café's background), but they are virtual mirror images in composition and expression. The boy's cowlick even made it into the final work.

“Rockwell was a keen observer of human nature,” Moffatt said. “You see that in his coaching of the expressions of his models.”

Rockwell would make a collage of the photographic subjects, which he would use as the basis for several sketches that grew larger in scale and sharper in detail. When he was satisfied, he would project the image onto a canvas and trace its lines.

“This way, he could concentrate on his palette, and the result would be the colors you find in the final piece,” Moffatt said. “Rockwell saw the drawings as utility tools in the process; now they are in museums and corporate collections.”

Born in New York City in 1894, Rockwell always wanted to be an artist. He enrolled in art classes at the New York School of Art at 14 and later studied at the Art Students League. At 16, he received his first professional commission, for Christmas cards, before being hired as art director of Boys' Life, the official publication of the Boy Scouts of America.

In 1916, Rockwell sold two ideas to the Saturday Evening Post, kick-starting a 47-year relationship with the publication, producing 327 covers.

He created his most popular images — the “Freedom Paintings,” inspired by an address by Franklin Delano Roosevelt — during the darkest days of World War II.

Rockwell's war-bond posters of 1943 — “Freedom of Speech,” “Freedom of Worship,” “Freedom from Fear” and “Freedom from Want” — are “the most iconic paintings in American art,” Moffatt said.

“It's been estimated that they have been seen by more people than any other works of American art,” she said.

Rockwell began using photography in the mid-'30s, often recruiting his Vermont and, later, Massachusetts neighbors as models.

“Do anything and everything,” he said, “but get your story on film, even if it kills the model and you, too.”

No deaths were reported in the studio, however, and many of the models, like tomboy Mary Whalen (“Girl with a Black Eye”), posed again and again for the artist. The photograph made posing much less tedious — and less expensive. Rockwell once kept a stack of nickels and would give one to a child if he or she could hold a pose for just five more minutes.

In 1964, Rockwell broke ties with the conservative-leaning Saturday Evening Post and began a relationship with Look magazine.

While best known for his apple-pie, Americana images, during his 10-year association with Look, Rockwell painted pictures illustrating some of his deepest concerns and interests, including civil rights, America's war on poverty and the exploration of space.

Included in the exhibition is the material that produced “The Problem We All Live With,” featuring a young black girl being escorted to a desegregated school by marshals, a foul word scribbled on a tomato-stained wall behind her. It is one of the artist's most powerful images.

Rockwell also was criticized for being a mere “illustrator” who cheated with a camera by the art cognoscenti.

“I've know artists who've admired Norman Rockwell but won't admit it because they say it's a career killer,” Moffatt said. “But that has absolutely changed. We get many artists who come to the museum to study Rockwell's work and technique.”

McNay Director William Chiego said “Behind the Camera” offers San Antonio “the opportunity to understand Rockwell's creative process and better appreciate his achievements and his enduring appeal.”

“Rockwell had a rare gift for storytelling,” he added. “He recorded the lives of everyday Americans with sensitivity and sympathy, creating memorable images that have become beloved icons of American art.”